Judy H wrote:Went to Reno this morning for breakfast......We got there right as they opened the door at 9am; by the time we left at 10:30, the place was filling up, but not so much that they needed our table, which was nice, since we could sit for awhile. Very friendly and attentive service.

We got there Sunday at around 11:15-11:30 or so, and it wasn't even half full. When we left, about an hour later, there was just starting to be a wait. We enjoyed what we had, but would have liked just a little slower pacing. We said we'd start with the sweet brioche, and also ordered sandwiches. It all came at the same time, very quickly. Next time we'll order in stages! We def want to go back and try the pizza.

I would have liked to know what was in the squeeze bottles on the table (I know I should have asked).

Leek

SAVING ONE DOG may not change the world, but it CHANGES THE WORLD for that one dog.American Brittany Rescue always needs foster homes. Please think about helping that one dog. http://www.americanbrittanyrescue.org

leek, you must have walked right by me at the communal table on sunday on your way out. i got there around 11:45 and there was a 25 minute wait, but we grabbed the last 2 stools (very comfortable) at the communal table and bypassed the wait. as ReneG points out, there is hot honey on the table (it pours out a beautiful magenta color). i actually enjoyed it, used sparingly, on my bagel with whipped feta yesterday. the other bottle is house made hot sauce, similar to Frank's red hot (my favorite).

leek wrote:I would have liked to know what was in the squeeze bottles on the table (I know I should have asked).

Yes! I didn't ask because I don't think it was anything that went with what I was eating, but I was very curious.

What on earth is "hot honey"? It doesn't sound like something I would want to put on pizza. There were two bottles -- I hope the second one wasn't just ketchup?

The other one is more of a regular, tangy hot sauce. The hot honey is sweet and a little spicy, the other one is just hot sauce. The regular hot sauce is good on pizza. I can't imagine the hot honey on it...

I had the hot honey at Paulie Gee's in Brooklyn, and it was GREAT on pizza, especially the pepperoni pizza. It really goes well with saltier, robust charcuterie, as well as hard cheeses. Frankly it was so delicious that I was ready to put it on just about anything. Very happy to hear it's on the table at Reno.

Anthony Bourdain on Barack Obama: "He's from Chicago, so he knows what good food is."

Finally had the pizzas, and they were quite good. Nice ratio of toppings to crust, and the crust was chewy without being "break my jaw" chewy. We had one with pork on it, and it was particularly good, though all the different ones we tried were nice. The outside patio is open, and it's quite pleasant there.

Leek

SAVING ONE DOG may not change the world, but it CHANGES THE WORLD for that one dog.American Brittany Rescue always needs foster homes. Please think about helping that one dog. http://www.americanbrittanyrescue.org

Just returned from Reno - my second visit there for dinner - and the pizzas were far better than on my first visit there. Terrific crusts, terrific toppings, altogether delicious. I still love deep dish pizza, but I'm often in the mood for thin crust and I'm really thrilled with the variety of thin crust pizza offerings in the city now.

G Wiv wrote:I'd further venture they make the gravlox, which I liked quite a bit, in-house. Bagel was terrific but at $2.25 per

Much as I remember liking the lox last time I was at Reno, I thought it even better this morning. Rich, sliky, slightly oily/fishy, in a good way. Notes of salty/sweet, nicely done gravlox. Bagel seemed the same, in other words terrific. Good coffee, quick service, lots of parking, weirdly empty at 9am.

i must have just missed you this morning gary- i got there about 10am. yes, weekday mornings are very quiet (except for the great, but TOO LOUD music reno plays). it makes it a wonderful place to linger with a book or a laptop. i noticed a sign in the window announcing that tuesdays they offer 2 pizzas for $20, which is a great deal. pizza's start baking at 4:30 everyday.

Mrs. JiLS and I made our second visit to Reno on Tuesday (11/19/13), and we continue to be pretty much pleased with their pizza. We took advantage of their really ridiculous two pizzas for $20 Tuesday special mentioned one post up by justjoan. Fantastic crusts on both pies. For one, we had the T.O, with smoked chicken that I thought was out of this world, with the smoky aroma wafting into your nose for a sensory double hit as you lift the slice up for eating.

For the other, we had the Fancy Nancy, which is more or less a Margherita pizza with a mighty dollop of burrata cheese in the middle. I'm not sure what I make of the burrata on this; it's good quality cheese, but (1) they put a LOT of it on there, to the point of being somewhat out of proportion to the pie, (2) it's served at near-refrigerator temperature atop the hot pizza, which just doesn't work too well. They serve the burrata as an appetizer, and that plus a plain pizza may be the better way to go if you want to try this tasty cheese.

Finished with peppermint ice cream that was very rich, extremely pepperminty, and to my taste too sweet. Their buttered rum ice cream, which we had on a prior visit, is a much better choice.

We will definitely be going back; it's not perfect, and I would not call it destination dining, but it's the best pizza by far that I have found in our immediate neighborhood (although after 11 years, I have still not had the guts to order from Little Clown, so I may be premature in my assessment).

i had another great meal at reno last night. we started with a delicious raw, shredded brussel sprout, parmesan, cider vinaigrette salad. and i ordered a pizza that i believe is new to the menu. it's called a 'dalek' and was duck pastrami (house made, i assume), arugula, roasted pears, taleggio and mozzarella. the pastrami, while used sparingly, was loaded with flavor and perfectly complemented the sweetness of the pears and the slight bitterness of the arugula. i'll definitely be ordering it again. i also tried a red sauce pizza customized with roasted garlic and smoked onion. the onion was a wonderful, strong presence and the person who ordered it was in heaven. the only disappointment was my white gin negroni. the salers aperitif they subbed in for the campari just didn't do it for me. i think they should call the drink something else. a small blip in an otherwise satisfying meal, though.

Just went here for lunch with my daughter. I had the Hook sandwich on an everything bagel, and my daughter had lox and cream cheese on an English muffin (they don't have plain bagels and were out of sesame bagels, and that's about as adventurous as she was willing to go). The food was very good, lox was tasty, veggies very fresh on my sandwich, and I loved the uber-creamy artichoke cream cheese. I thought for the price, though, that the bagel is a tad bit skimpy--- though very tasty, albeit in a different, sort of not-so-puffy/fluffy-style-- and it worked. My daughter's English muffin was very puffy, on the other hand. It appeared to be covered in cornmeal and had some taste I couldn't put my finger on. It was good, though sort of hard to judge, given that it was slathered in cream cheese and lox, as opposed to covered in butter (I feel odd judging an English muffin that doesn't have butter melting into it.) Service was ok, not great. All in all, though, this place is nowhere near my home and I just didn't feel like it's somewhere I'll be rushing back to. If it were right in the neighborhood, I'm sure I'd frequent it for coffee or a bagel - but not for a special trip. I think for the price, that the bagels need to have a little more heft.

rehorn wrote: All in all, though, this place is nowhere near my home and I just didn't feel like it's somewhere I'll be rushing back to. If it were right in the neighborhood, I'm sure I'd frequent it for coffee or a bagel - but not for a special trip. I think for the price, that the bagels need to have a little more heft.

sorry reborn, nothing personal, but it's upsetting to read you want a heftier bagel to justify the cost. reno makes a particular style of bagel. (see the beginning of this thread for details). for some of us, (meaning ME), this thin, chewy bagel is the bagel ideal. if you said you wish it was cheaper, i'd be sympathetic, but making it bigger would be to destroy the essential nature of the bagel. it simply wouldn't taste the same. below see sula's article on reno. as usual, he's done a great job, and is better than i would be at describing reno's bagel style.

I have to agree. Not to mention that the value proposition would have to be in the toppings, wouldn't it? I mean, how much more "cost" is involved in making a bigger bagel than a smaller one--a few more cents in flour?

"Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad." Miles Kington

After hearing that this was the best place in Chicago for bagels, I decided to check it out. My verdict: the baked goods are excellent as is the food, but it still does not satisfy my desire for New York style bagels, which I've concluded are only to be had in Skokie. Of course, when I arrived, I had only the choice between olive and asiago cheese... Oy!!! IMHO bagels should come in plain, poppy, onion, and maybe sesame and cinnamon raisin, but that's it. And they should all taste vaguely of onion. Olive? Please... And parking sucks. But I'd go back for brunch!!

CharlotteBeth wrote:After hearing that this was the best place in Chicago for bagels, I decided to check it out. My verdict: the baked goods are excellent as is the food, but it still does not satisfy my desire for New York style bagels, which I've concluded are only to be had in Skokie. Of course, when I arrived, I had only the choice between olive and asiago cheese... Oy!!! IMHO bagels should come in plain, poppy, onion, and maybe sesame and cinnamon raisin, but that's it. And they should all taste vaguely of onion. Olive? Please... And parking sucks. But I'd go back for brunch!!

i'm with you on wanting simple bagels. reno doesn't even offer a plain bagel, which is downright weird. i'd vote for plain, poppyseed, sesame seed, and onion, if anyone asked me… i do not want anything sweet on my bagel. i always order a sesame bagel, usually with their deliciously salty whipped feta topping. my niece cleverly named this a 'fesame', and since i order this probably twice a week, the regular staff knows exactly what i mean if i ask for it.

Maybe I didn't choose my words carefully (and while I liked the bagel a lot, I do prefer one with more heft -- without consideration to cost), but I guess I felt that this particular sandwich was overpriced and even left feeling a bit hungry.

A recent meal here was enjoyable enough but not nearly as special or noteworthy as any of my previous experiences. Pizzas were tasty but the crusts were much floppier than in the past and relatively ordinary. Service was perfunctory, bordering on indifferent. We sat near the bathrooms and we could smell them (or maybe a cracked sewer pipe) from our table. Definitely not rushing back any time soon.

=R=

I am not interested in how I would evaluate the Springbank in a blind tasting. Every spirit has its story, and I include it in my evaluation, just as I do with human beings. --Thad Vogler

Reno made a great back-up option for brunch when Longman and Eagle quoted us a 2-hour wait-- by the time L&E called to tell us our table was ready, we had finished our lunch at Reno and were waddling happily down Logan Blvd to our car. Better luck for the next person down on the list.

Now for the food-- I had the Hook (again), which was very good (again)-- the lox was nicely sliced and the components were present in good proportions. My daughter enjoyed the olive bagel with plain cream cheese and lox-- not a listed menu option, but we asked. The service was warm and helpful. My husband and his aunt each had a pizza-- his with jalapenos and bacon and hers with the peanut sauce and smoked chicken. The pizzas were perfectly cooked and the toppings were good, but what I really love about Reno is the taste and texture of the crust-- the perfect amount of chew. I think the crust of Reno's pizza tastes better than the crust at either Coalfire or Forno Rosso (and we love both of these places too).

Great place for brunch in Logan Square-- and only a 20-minute wait at 11 on Sunday, although when we left, there was much more of a crowd. We had the booth next to the bathroom, but didn't notice any off odors-- not that I would, but auntie would definitely have commented!

Ducked in this morning for a coffee and bagel before going to the farmers' market. I had their everything bagel with regular cream cheese on it. Their everything bagel is nonstandard, but in a tasty way. Didn't get the typical salt, overpowering garlic, etc out of it, it definitely had oats on it, as well as noticeable cumin seed which made for a really nice flavor that I wasn't expecting, but definitely enjoyed. Bagel texture is on point. Definitely enjoyed it.

smellen wrote: I enjoyed my 1st visit to Reno earlier in December; went with a few friends for a weekend breakfast and was happy they were serving their lunchtime sandwiches already (it was probably close to 11am). On the menu it said those sandwiches were not available until noon but the server let us know they plan to update the menu as they are open to serving those earlier than noon.Unfortunately, my sandwich was a bit tricky to eat (the "Dip"), though the components were enjoyable. The menu item is listed as: DipSpinach & Artichoke Spread / Pecorino / Red Onion / Frisée / Brioche—7.5They were open to sub a different bread option (I went with a bagel instead of brioche) but the issue was the spread overwhelmed the sandwich. It was on both sides and just way too much. I couldn't eat the sandwich in one piece due to the spread, so I switched to eat half open faced and then took the 2nd half home. There was still enough "dip" that I could eat it with some chips and then finally the rest of the sandwich later that afternoon. I would hope they tweak this presentation as it was not very enticing but sounded so good (much more of a heavy spinach dip, entirely green and not what I pictured in my head).Either way, this order did not sway me and my 2 dining partners were very happy with their orders (the "Hook" and "Basic") and the bagels overall.Excited to go back and try breakfast again and the pizza/pastas at dinner. Cheers!

So let me get this correct:At Reno, the "Hook" brings you back?♬ Are you telling me a lie? ♬